A beggar, crouched at a street corner, urinated on himself in terror when Azarion stopped and loomed over him. “Have you seen a woman . . .” He described Gilene, emphasizing her height as well as the fading bruise on her cheek. Those, more than the nondescript clothes she wore or her facial features, would be things people remembered about her. At least he didn’t have the challenge of her illusion. Like her fire, that magic had yet to return. While Azarion could see through her conjuring, others couldn’t.
The beggar pointed with a shaking finger down the length of an alley garlanded in clotheslines hung with laundry, and Azarion sprinted down the dim close, dodging wet garments and blankets that flapped and showered water droplets onto the street. He spotted movement ahead—the whip motion of a clothesline pulled or dragged as someone passed under its hangings—and picked up his pace. The snap of a skirt rounding a corner sent him running down a wider street. A dead end and, at its farthest reach, his quarry.
Her back was to him for the moment, and she was surrounded on three sides by the leaning heights of mud-brick buildings. She whirled to run back the way she came, skidding to a halt when she saw him.
Azarion slowed to a walk. “It’s done, Gilene. No more running.”
Her hands opened, and she raised her arms, palms facing him. Her eyes closed as she turned her attention inward.
Azarion paused, poised on the balls of his feet to flee if she managed to call up any of her drained magic and summon fire. He had no doubt that, if she succeeded, she would do her best to roast him like a butchered pig.
Tears spilled down her cheeks in silvery rivulets as she concentrated to no avail. Nothing so much as a candle flame lit her fingers, and she soon gave up, her arms dropping to her sides. She retreated from him until her back hit the wall that trapped her in the alley. She refused to look at him when he stood in front of her. “You have no right to take me,” she said in a flat voice.
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “But I need you.”
“My village needs me, and they’re more important than you are.”
Right or wrong, he had no intention of arguing with her any longer. This wasn’t a good place to be, for either of them. Azarion swooped in, lifted her rigid body in his arms, and jogged away from the entrapping alley. He had no comfort to offer, only the repeated assurance—which she didn’t believe—that he’d return her to her people whole and hearty when he no longer needed her.
She murmured something against his chest. He leaned in closer. “What did you say?”
Her voice was quiet, warbling, but no less vitriolic for its softness. “I curse you. May you suffer, and strive, and never succeed.”
A faint shiver danced along his arms. As curses went, this one lacked the drama of torture and epic death. But what it lacked in extravagance, it more than made up for in longevity and thoroughness.
His sigh ghosted the top of her head. “Best hope that doesn’t take, Agacin, or I’ll never be able to send you home.”
They said no more to each other until Azarion found an alcove created by the intersection of two garden walls not far from the stable yard and a good distance from the teeming market. A fountain burbled nearby, and he drank its water from cupped hands. Gilene did the same, her throat working hard as she sipped down several handfuls of water.
She followed him to the shaded alcove and sat, too tired to fight him. For now. She tilted her head back until it touched the wall, and closed her eyes. Her hands, still wet from the fountain, rested easy in her lap. No hint of the bleak, frightened woman remained. In that quiet moment, Azarion could almost convince himself she was his companion for the day, enjoying the weather and his company.
It was a good dream, albeit a fleeting one. He had just chased her through half of Wellspring Holt and, had her magic worked, would have been burned to a cinder for his trouble. He didn’t have much hope that the truce between them now might last long enough to at least get out of the town.
His gaze skimmed her, noting the graceful length of her neck, the way her collarbones created a straight ridge under her skin, curving at their ends to highlight the hollow of her throat. He’d seen her naked at her bath, goosefleshed from the cold, her long legs bent so close to her torso, she could have pressed her cheek to her knee.
He hadn’t leered at her. It was true he’d seen and embraced many women, some prostitutes, but mostly Kraelian noblewomen who lusted for a gladiator fresh from the Pit and covered in blood. Gilene didn’t stand out among them, except for her height and the many scars she bore from her magic. Were she something other than an agacin, he might have overlooked her. Those scars puzzled him mightily, though it was obvious to him she expected revulsion instead of puzzlement.
Now, with the sunlight bathing her upturned features and her closed eyelids hiding the hatred in her expression every time she looked at him, she was almost pretty. Driven by a strange combination of bitterness and devotion, she was as intent on returning to Beroe as he was to the Sky Below. It was unfortunate their goals conflicted and the places they most desired to reach lay in opposite directions.
She shifted a leg to get in a more comfortable position, and Azarion heard a soft plopping sound before the wedge of cheese he’d stolen earlier fell out of her pocket. Surprised and delighted that, despite the chase, she still carried it and hopefully the small stash of oats, he rescued the cheese from the dirt and tucked it back into place. He’d eaten well, as had Gilene, before they bade Hamod and his folk farewell. Eating again would have to wait until nightfall, when they were horsed and on the road far from Wellspring Holt.
“We’ll eat tonight on horseback,” he said. “The stable yard is housing two horses that will serve our purpose and put a few leagues between us and the town before anyone knows they’re gone.”
Gilene turned her head a fraction, her gaze merciless in its judgment. “You lie. You steal. Have you no guilt over the things you’ve taken? Someone’s horse. Someone’s goods. Someone’s daughter or sister?”
She was relentless in her bid to shame him. He sloughed it off. Survival had no use for shame. “Ten years ago my cousin stole my birthright and my freedom by selling me to the Empire. Trust me, I understand the pain of having something valuable taken from you by someone else.”
Curiosity brightened her gaze. She sat up straighter and faced him more fully. “You survived the Pit for ten years. You must be very good at slaughter.”
“Very good.” It wasn’t a boast. He’d spilled enough blood in the arena to float a ship.
A line appeared between her eyebrows as a thought occurred to her. “Why is it I’ve only seen you the past three years during the choosing of the women?”
Her question was a fair one, and he had nothing to hide in that matter. “I had no interest in taking part until then.” And sometimes not even the opportunity. The empress had favored him for a long time, delighting in degrading him, whether by means of combat, rape, or false hope. So while there had been nothing he could do to help the Flowers of Spring or change the fate that awaited them, he sympathized with their plight. The Empire spared no one, man or woman.